The Academic Avant-Garde: Poetry and the American University

by Kimberly Quiogue Andrews

Overview

The surprising story of the relationship between experimental poetry and literary studies.

In The Academic Avant-Garde, Kimberly Quiogue Andrews makes a provocative case for the radical poetic possibilities of the work of literary scholarship and lays out a foundational theory of literary production in the context of the university. In her examination of the cross-pollination between the analytic humanities and the craft of poetry writing, Andrews tells a bold story about some of today's most innovative literary works.

This pathbreaking intervention into contemporary American literature and higher education demonstrates that experimental poetry not only reflects nuanced concern about creative writing as a discipline but also uses the critical techniques of scholarship as a cornerstone of poetic practice. Structured around the concepts of academic labor (such as teaching) and methodological work (such as theorizing), the book traces these practices in the works of authors ranging from Claudia Rankine to John Ashbery, providing fresh readings of some of our era's most celebrated and difficult poets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421444949
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Kimberly Quiogue Andrews is an assistant professor of English at the University of Ottawa. She is the author of two collections of poetry, A Brief History of Fruit and BETWEEN.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction. The 500-Pound Gorilla
Chapter 1. The Dream and the Deed
Chapter 2. Reading Ashbery Reading Ashbery
Chapter 3. Poetry in the Teaching Machine
Chapter 4. Citational Coding
Chapter 5. Archival Authorizations
Coda. Towards an Aesthetics of Disciplinarity
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Timothy Yu

With forceful argumentation, The Academic Avant-Garde tells a compelling story about a strain of self-reflexive poetics from Stevens to the present. Andrews's ambitious study shows how moving into the institutional space of the university has brought poetry in closer contact with the scholarly outlook of the academic humanities.

Evie Shockley

This valuable study delights in close readings that tangle with and model the very knots that are its argument's subject, clarifying issues and stakes in ways that will generate productive debate.

Anthony Reed

The Academic Avant-Garde will surely excite scholars of postwar American poetry. Amid careful, attentive engagement with the poets it studies, this book shows that if the humanities are in crisis it is precisely because of the pressure they put on other developments within society.

From the Publisher

This valuable study delights in close readings that tangle with and model the very knots that are its argument's subject, clarifying issues and stakes in ways that will generate productive debate.
—Evie Shockley, author of Suddenly We

The Academic Avant-Garde will surely excite scholars of postwar American poetry. Amid careful, attentive engagement with the poets it studies, this book shows that if the humanities are in crisis it is precisely because of the pressure they put on other developments within society.
—Anthony Reed, author of Soundworks: Race, Sound, and Poetry in Production

With forceful argumentation, The Academic Avant-Garde tells a compelling story about a strain of self-reflexive poetics from Stevens to the present. Andrews's ambitious study shows how moving into the institutional space of the university has brought poetry in closer contact with the scholarly outlook of the academic humanities.
—Timothy Yu, author of Diasporic Poetics: Asian Writing in the United States, Canada, and Australia